CatH Post 51
Since being trapped in the Deep Void in CatH Post 50, Clear, in CatH Post 51, has come to depend upon the Dreamviewer to help her sleep through the loneliness of the Deep Void. In her dream she sees a warped version of herself and her life where she, Clear, has become The Clearness, the ship, while Clear has been replaced by a green-skinned woman called Hope. Ultimately Hope and her crew fall victim to The Darkness which shrouds their world and consumes all. When Clear wakes she has to find something dull and mind-numbing to do, so she retires to to her usual habit of striking a ping-pong ball against the shields of The Hopeful's hangar. Post Strange Dreams Isolation drains Clear as the weeks had turned into months. In the Deep Void, Clear had to cope not only with the lack of any contact with life, but also anything resembling existence beyond the confines of her ship, leaving her in a strange pseudo-present where the past hung not far behind and the future out of sight. At first, Clear spent sleepless nights debating whether she had, in fact, fallen into Hell, and if she somehow deserved to remain alone. Social survival soon overwhelmed her, and she spent more sleepless nights scouring the ship's systems for any means of repair to the engines or communication with anyone who would hear her. As those efforts proved fruitless, and as her waking state left her tormented her with only her past and her lack of future, she continues to depend more and more on the Dreamviewer for escape... In one of those escapes, Clear dreams that she is her ship. Or rather, she dreams she's a ship like her own, and her ship is a green-skinned humanoid female, named Hope, with their whole lives equally backwards in an absurd mix of comical fantasy and strange horror. Hope strolls around her, named the Clearness, with Red, a not-so-innocent boy who could control meat, and a robot friend named DB-3, working with Clear through an A.I. named Neglect. Hope lives as a social trader with her other people until she decides to adventure beyond her home, where she encounters the galactic peace-keeping Federation in the midst of dealing with the profit-seeking Alliance. Hope helps in their diplomatic talks, yet both sides are cautious in supporting Hope's needs due to their cultural obligations. Clear expected Hope to encounter a mystic order of laser sword wielders attuned to magic, but Hope is assured that such things are not logical or sensible. Hope does encounter a man in a giant can named Prince Albert, and he carries with him a not-so-famous scimitar lobbed at him by a watery tart as well as dementia, making details of his past difficult to comprehend. The prince has with him something of a stalker, her name being Kerry Dayskipper, who provides Hope with a "Wakeseer" which are just a pair of binoculars she likes to use for spying from a distance. '' ''In Hope's life, there is a sense of never-ending adventure and fun, where hardly anyone ever dies. That is, until Hope looks through the binoculars and sees a malevolent inky force on a distant planet. The darkness consumes. The darkness kills everything, as if existence itself is a sin. Kerry Dayskipper dies to the darkness, Prince Albert dies to the darkness, DB-3 dies to the darkness, Red dies to the darkness... except Red is Green. Up is down. Black is white. Hope, despite appearing physically as a well-endowed young woman, shows a hidden age as the malevolent force approaches, turning to Clear for help, but Clear has no super-weapon, no secrets up her sleeves and countless corridors, her history ripped away from her databanks. The darkness envelopes her and Hope--'' ''Clear jerks awake from the Dreamviewer in a sweat. Despite her growing dependance, the benefits the machine once gave her grow fewer and fewer. She needs something mindless and repetitive to draw her mind away from everything else. Clear picks up a ball and heads for the hanger, to stare into the Deep Void. Category:Post Category:CatH Post